I cannot underestimate the joy she must have felt, leaving my father behind in Havengard as she and I returned to her home country.
Returning to this island has been…c’est un peu lourd.
A little tedious.
Will Aurora love Paris as much as I do?
Will her eyes widen with excitement as she adopts the exquisite restraint of French life? Vulgarity is banished, and understated elegance is everything.
Since moving back to Havengard, the loud, exhausting ostentation of the Havengard Elites had become increasingly hard to tolerate.
For some reason, even the desperate clannishness of the Diggers is preferable to that.
I shock even myself with the thought.
But reason soon prevails as the panicked scuttling feet of Daniel destroys the moment. Of course these people are all hideous, what was I thinking?
He bursts into the room, chest heaving under his sweat-stained coveralls.
“Boss!” he wheezes, clutching the doorframe. “It’s the Guild! They’re attacking!”
I don’t move, but my temper fizzes as I realize my repose is not to be. “Explain, Daniel. Briefly.”
“A crew of ‘em caught Alanna and Carson in the back service-tunnel,” he whines. “They’re saying if they have to freeze, we’re gonna bleed. They’ve got pipes, shivs… they caught them completely off guard.”
A gasp comes from the cage. Aurora is on her feet, fingers curling around the bars of the cage. “Where’s Sky? Is she with Layla? Are they safe?” Her blue eyes are wide, not with fear for herself, but for the “family” she’s found in this gutter.
It’s irritating. She should only be worried about me.
Daniel sneers at her, then turns his back to stare at me, waiting for the “Boss” to perform. I don’t approve of his attitude, but that will be something to fix later.
For now, I stand slowly, the movement a stark contrast to Daniel’s frantic energy. Fighting factions. The thought of it almost gives me a cold thrill.
The monotony of the morning, the tedious talk of laundry and sewage—it’s gone. Finally, the prison is offering me something I’m interested in: pain and power.
“How many of these invaders have encroached on our territory?” I ask.
My mind begins to calculate even while I shudder at the shared “our” I just used.
“Five? Six?” he yelps. “The guards are just backing off, letting it happen! They want us to cull each other!”
That seems likely. I’d do the same in the warden’s position.
“Wait,” an annoying raspy voice cuts into my thoughts.
The wolf stirs. He’s pale and sweat-slicked, but his golden-brown eyes are finally open—and they’re fixed on my minion. “Are they in the bottleneck?”
“Yeah, and the door to the workshop is bolted from the other side.”
Of course these two know the layout. It’s not a shared language I will bother to learn. Taliesin groans then pulls himself to sitting.
Bevan looks at me, and for the first time, the hatred in his gaze is tempered by a desperate pragmatism. “Let me out of here, de Vaux. You’re useless in this context. They need me.”
“You?” I arch an eyebrow, looking down at his trembling frame. “You can barely draw a breath, let alone a blade.”
Aurora helps him to his feet. “Do as he says, François.”
With one hand clinging to the bars, Bevan attempts to straighten. “You may think you’re the Boss,” he croaks. “But they won’t listen to you. If I’m there, I can end this without a massacre.”
